From Channel Row to Cabra: Dominican Nuns and Their Times, 1717-1820

This is the story of a group of Dominican women who came to Dublin from Galway in 1717, set up a new foundation with a boarding school for girls and a retirement home for ladies. This is the framework within which the author sets out the difficulties, hardships, and successes of Mary Bellew and her community. Mary herself and her companions were from the Anglo-Irish landed gentry whose families were able to keep their lands after the debacle of James II's disastrous defeat at the Boyne. The nuns lived in the era of the Penal Laws when they were liable to harassment from the authorities, the worry of financial ruin, falling numbers of boarders and community members. However, they survived to move on to Clontarf and Cabra; by 1819 only five nuns survived. From that remnant in the nineteenth century off-shoots have sprung up in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Louisiana and teh Cabra convent and Congregation have survived all these vicissitudes.